On Wednesday, in a closed-door ruling in Microsoft Corp.'s (MSFT) "home court" in Seattle, a federal jury ruled that Microsoft would get effectively a free license of Motorola's patents and ordered Motorola to pay modest damages to Microsoft after it was found to have breached its licensing obligations concerning video and smartphone patents.

Google's subsidiary Motorola lost a major case this week. [Image Source: TechnoBuffalo]

After that victory, Microsoft filed a second suit against Motorola, claiming it had breached its FRAND obligations by asking for such a high license rate. Microsoft argued that Motorola essentially gave it to "unreasonable" licensing options -- either pay a large sum ($4B USD) or give Android OEMs free licensing of Microsoft portfolio.

A jury this week ruled in agreement with Microsoft's lawyers that neither of these options was "fair" or "reasonable". They thus decided that Motorola should be forced to give Microsoft basically a free license for its abuse. Microsoft will pay Motorola $1.8M USD, but the jury ruled that Motorola must pay Microsoft $14.5M USD, essentially nullifying Microsoft's licensing fee.

The case is being tried in Seattle, Washington, just 16 miles from Microsoft's headquarters. The local court has handed Microsoft two major wins. [Image Source: Foreclosure Listings]

The verdict is slightly less than the $23M USD that Microsoft sought, but nonetheless is a massive win for Microsoft. Microsoft can now move forward with its efforts to ban Motorola's products from the market if Motorola refuses to pay Microsoft's exorbitant licensing fee demands.

II. Android OEMs Face Microsoft Milking

A Microsoft spokesperson confirmed the ruling to Reuters cheering the verdict, stating, "This is a landmark win for all who want products that are affordable and work well together."

In some OEMs cases like HTC, ZTE, and Huawei, they are too young and have too little intellectual property to fight Microsoft's patent demands via countersuits. In the case of LG, Motorola, and Samsung, the underlying problem is that much of their patents were licensed cooperatively as part of industry standards. This has played to the advantage of companies like Microsoft and Apple, Inc. (AAPL) who refused to cooperate with their fellow firms, as federal courts have now ruled their patents are up to 10,000 times more valuable than the Android OEMs FRAND patents.

Motorola's spokesperson William Moss sounded resigned about the decision commenting to Reuters, "We're disappointed in this outcome, but look forward to an appeal of the new legal issues raised in this case. In the meantime, we'll focus on building great products that people love."

With the most recent ruling Motorola has essentially lost to Microsoft in the U.S. pending appeal.

Elsewhere, in Germany it has scored a minor win, forcing some Microsoft products off the market, although Microsoft has forced Motorola into similar warehouse relocations as Motorola smartphones have also been pulled.

This outcome is not necessarily indicative of which company will ultimately win -- Microsoft seems to have a least a minor edge given the U.S. outcome -- but rather a testament to Germany's strange intellectual property systems which typically starts cases with a ban (effectively an assumption of guilt) later removing the ban if the infringement claims prove untrue. For German consumers this means that they now have to go to neighboring countries to pick up some Motorola and Microsoft products involved in the case (e.g. the Moto RAZR MAXX or Microsoft's Xbox 360).

Microsoft and Motorola both scored bans on each others' products in Germany.
[Image Source: All About Samsung]

Obama's trade appointee shot down a ban on iPhones and iPads, despite a preliminary finding by the ITC that Apple willfully stole Samsung's FRAND IP and refused to pay for licensing it.
[Image Source: Sodahead]

That case, however, was very different. Whereas Motorola was found to have been abusive in its licensing request, Samsung was found to have asked for reasonable licensing rates. Apple refused to pay Samsung -- anything -- hence the ITC ruled on grounds of "reverse-holdup" that in this special case Samsung could sue Apple for a product ban using FRAND products, as Apple appeared to be effectively willfully stealing and refusing to pay for Samsung's IP.

The Obama administration ignored these facts, siding with Apple, whose late CEO direct President Barack Obama's digital media campaign in the 2012 election. The administration's decision set an alarming precedent in that it signaled that companies can now essentially willfully, openly steal FRAND IP and refuse to pay anything for licensing (as the ITC ruled Apple did), so long as they do favors for the President.

"Intel is investing heavily (think gazillions of dollars and bazillions of engineering man hours) in resources to create an Intel host controllers spec in order to speed time to market of the USB 3.0 technology." -- Intel blogger Nick Knupffer